Does Democracy Affect the Environment in the Developing Countries? Evidence from Air Visibility

A common finding in the literature is that pollution worsens with economic growth but then decreases after the GDP per capita reaches a certain threshold, which lends support to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. However, we argue that the environmental turning point could not be achieved for developing countries with low level of democracy. By employing a unique global air visibility database that covers the entire world, we provide evidence showing a large gap between the turning points of the EKC of countries with different levels of democracy. Specifically, although an EKC relationship still exists in weak-democracy countries, their turning point is around US$ 14,000, doubling that of countries with a high level of democracy and well above the average income level of the autocratic countries